Thursday, August 2, 2012

Counter-terrorism agencies and the Police are taken
by surprise when terrorists strike for the first time using a new modus
operandi (MO). This is natural. We had seen this happen in Mumbai in March,1993,
in the US on 9/11, in Madrid in 2004, in London in 2005 and some other places.

2. In other countries after such surprises, the
Police and other investigating agencies manage to do a thorough investigation,
reconstruct the crime, identify deficiencies that facilitated the successful
terrorist strikes and strengthen preventive measures to see that similar
strikes are not repeated.

3. India is a country where the terrorists manage
to strike again and again using the same MO and often similar material without
the police being able to prevent this happening. Since 1993, when Ramzi Yousef
tried to blow up the New York World Trade Centre with a truckload of ammonium
nitrate, a commonly used fertiliser, terrorists in different parts of the world
started using ammonium nitrate as the explosive base if they are not able to
lay hand on military-grade explosives. Instances of such use of ammonium
nitrate have been considerably prevented in other countries through an
effective regulatory mechanism to control the sale of ammonium nitrate and its
pilferage from the stocks of agriculturists authorised to buy them.

4. Even though terrorists in India have also been
repeatedly using ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel oil in their improvised
explosive devices (IEDs), our police and counter-terrorism agencies have not so
far been able to put in place an effective regulatory mechanism to prevent the
use of ammonium nitrate for acts of terrorism. According to media reports, ammonium
nitrate was the explosive base used in the Pune blasts of August 1,2012.

5. Many of our terrorist strikes remain
inadequately investigated and unsuccessfully prosecuted. The two major exceptions
to this were the March 1993 serial explosions in Mumbai and the 26/11 terrorist
strikes in Mumbai. The arrests of some members of the Memon family when they
returned to India from Karachi and their interrogation contributed to the
successful investigation and prosecution of the Indian perpetrators of the
March 1993 explosions. The capture of Ajmal Kasab, one of the Pakistani perpetrators of
the 26/11 strikes, led to the successful detection and prosecution. If Kasab
had also been killed, it is doubtful whether there would have been a successful
prosecution.

6. The so-called Indian Mujahideen (IM) has carried
out a number of strikes using IEDs at least since 2007, if not earlier, in
different cities ofIndia. None of these
cases has so far led to a successful prosecution though many arrests were made.
An alibi often advanced by our police and agencies for the inadequate
investigation of these cases is that the three leaders of the IM operate from
sanctuaries in Pakistan.

7.This alibi does not explain why we are not able
to investigate thoroughly and completely what has been happening in our
territory. The fact that the leaders operate from sanctuaries in Pakistan can
explain our not being able to collect information and evidence about their
activities and their contacts with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and
the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). But, this cannot explain our inability to collect
details regarding their foot jihadis in India, their accomplices, their sleeper
cells and their sources of material required for IEDs.

8. The IM has often been using the MO of planting
the IEDs in bicycles. All we are able to find out is wherefrom they procured
the cycles, which is easy to find out and does not require special investigative
skills. But we seem to be still in the dark about their sources of procurement
of detonators, which can normally be procured only from quarries, mines and
construction companies and the storage depots of the security forces which
stock detonators for professional use.

9. There have been very few instances of an IM
perpetrator being caught red-handed as Kasab was. Most of our reconstruction
is, therefore, based on statements of suspects arrested and interrogated after
the commission of an act of terrorism.Their interrogation is apparently not
able to provide a continuous and unbroken narrative of how the terrorist strike
was planned and executed, resulting in inadequate detection and prosecution.

10. These deficiencies in our counter-terrorism
preventive and investigation machinery cannot be removed merely by setting-up
the proposed National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC). There is a need for a
determined attempt to improve the investigation skills of the Police in
terrorism-related cases in the States. ( 3-8-12)

In an excellent analysis on the morning of August
2,2012, under the title “Dismissive Congress In No Mood To Engage With Anna”,
Smita Gupta, the "Hindu's" New Delhi correspondent, wrote: “ A year-and-a-half after
Mr.Hazare placed the issue of corruption in the public domain, striking a chord
with a middle class unhappy with the slowdown in the economy, the movement
appears to have fizzled out.”

2.The fact that Anna and his Team had themselves
realised that their movement had reached a dead-end became obvious a few hours
later when a group of eminent persons released a statement appealing to the
fasting Anna and his colleagues to end their fast and continue their struggle
by building an alternate political force.

3.This appeal was seen by many as the beginning of
a search for a face-saving by a group of civil society leaders to salvage the
movement from an embarrassing second fizzle-out after the one of last year in
Mumbai. The Government’s dismissive attitude and the poor response from the
students of Delhi to the appeal of Shri Arvind Kejriwal to miss their classes
for a week and come to Jantar Mantar seemed to have turned the scale against
those who were in favour of continuing the fast and keeping up the
confrontation against the Government.

4.Later that day, Anna announced the decision of
the team to give up the fast at 5 PM on August 3 and discuss what next. From
his remarks, it is not clear that he has now come round to the view that
forming an alternate political party to contest the 2014 elections on a plank
of clean, people-friendly, honest Government was the only option left to him. In
media interviews given by him before the fast, he had indicated that while he might
be inclined to back some members of his team with a good track record if they
decided to contest the elections, he was disinclined to contest himself or form
a political party of his own. Many have assumed after his remarks on the
termination of the fast that he has now veered in favour of a new political
party to enter the electoral fray. It is yet to be seen whether this is so.

5. The movement against corruption has not failed.
The moral and intellectual support enjoyed by Anna from large sections of the
middle class of this country has not dwindled. At the same time, there is a
fatigue with the tactics adopted by the movement to achieve its objective of a
corruption-free India. The frequent resort to dramatic fasts and attempts to
coerce the Government through various pressure tactics to concede its demands
were having less and less takers. The law of diminishing returns had set in,
highlighting the need for a change of tactics. Most discouraging was the fact
that Anna and his movement had failed to electrify the common people in the
rest of the country. It remained largely an elitist-cum middle class movement.

6. Forming an alternative political party that can
deliver within the two years that remain before the elections is not going to
be easy. Apart from the lack of funds, the lack of political cadres who can
carry its electoralfight to different
parts of the country would stand in the way of its political exercise succeeding.
Moreover, having thus far projected the movement as a moral crusade not owing
its inspiration to any political party, it cannot now seek to join hands with
existing political parties for carrying the movement forward. That will result
in a further dilution of the credibility of the movement and make Team Anna
appear as a group of political opportunists incognito from the beginning.

7. A better option will be a nation-wide campaign
by Anna to convert what has remained an elitist middle class movement into a
mass movement of the people based on three slogans: “Say No To Bribe”,”Bring in
Jan Lokpal” and “Free the CBI From Govt Clutches”. Till now, the people were
being brought to New Delhi to demonstrate the people’s power of the movement. Now, it is
time for Anna to go to the masses of this country to demonstrate his concerns
for them because of the cancer of corruption and rally them in support of his
cause.

8. What Anna needs is a movementpatterned after the Bhoodan movement of
Acharya Vinoba Bhave. Vinobaji did not place his faith in Delhi. He placed it
in the masses in the rest of India. He undertook a padayatra from village to
village, from town to town to disseminate his message of “land for the landless
peasant”. He did not have to go to Delhi from time to time to demonstrate his
coercive power. Delhi went to him wherever he was in recognition of his moral
and spiritual force. He did not succeed in achieving his objective of
re-distribution of land, but he succeeded in creating a mass awareness of the economic and social
discrimination against the peasants.

9. Unless the people are made aware of the need to
fight corruption by refusing to give bribe for whatever reason, the movement
will remain without moral force. It will be a show-off movement as it has
remained till now without moral
attraction. If Anna can persuade large sections of the people of this country
to refuse to pay bribe, the movement can achieve half its objective.

10. His emphasis on the need for a Jan Lokpal and
independence for the CBI is important. But, as rightly pointed out by Justice
Katju, some of the ideas underlining these measures as conceived by him and his
team are impractical. They will create a new bureaucracy as oppressive as the
one existing and create new avenues for harassment.

11.How to make the CBI professionally independent
and accountable without letting it become a rogue elephant not amenable to any
political control? Should it be converted into a constitutional institution
under a collective leadership consisting of two or three Directors equally
empowered and required to decide and act in unison? Such questions have not
been debated by Anna and his team. It is time to have an eminent persons group
to examine such questions, revisit their idea and come out with alternate
institutional formulations that could be placed before the people and the
political parties.

12. The country needs a rejuvenated movement
against corruption led by Anna and carried forward by his young followers. That
rejuvenation has to come from new models of corruption-free governance to be
aimed at, new ways of achieving it and mass participation in the movement. Its
power has to come not from threats of fasts, but the backing of the masses. (
3-8-12)

In the light of the four low-intensity blasts in Pune on August 1,2012,
there is a need for a co-ordinated revisit toreports being received from time to time since 2002 on the attraction of
Pune for terrorist elements----indigenous as well as foreign.

2.Pune as a possible centre for jihadi activities
came to notice in March 2002, when Abu Zubaidah, the then No.3 to Osama bin
Laden, was arrested by the Pakistani authorities acting at the instance of the
USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in the house of an activist of the
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) at Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab and handed over to the
FBI. He is now in the Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre in Cuba. Sections of the
Pakistani media had reported at that time that Abu Zubaidah, a Palestinian, had
studied computer science in Pune before crossing over into Pakistan and joining
Al Qaeda.

3.In September-October,2008, the Mumbai Police had
arrestedfour IT-savvy members of the Indian Mujahideen (
IM), who had played a role insendingE-mail messages in the
name of the IM before and after the Ahmedabad blasts of July, 2008, and before
the New Delhi blasts of September,2008, by hacking into Wi-fi networks in
Mumbai and Navin Mumbai. Three of them were from Pune. The four persons were:

Mohammed
Mansoor Asgar Peerbhoy aka Munawar aka Mannu. A 31-year-old resident of Pune,
who was allegedly working for an American Internet company in its Indian office
as a well-paid executive.

Mubin
Kadar Shaikh, a 24-year-oldgraduate of
computer science from Pune.

Asif
Bashir Shaikh, a 22-year-old mechanical engineer from Pune. In addition to
helping in sending the E-mail messages, he also reportedly played a role in
planting 18 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Surat, all of which failed
to explode.

Mohammed
Ismail Chaudhary, a 28-year-oldcomputer mechanic, who was also suspected to have helped in planting the
IEDs in Surat.

4. Peerbhoy was reported to have joined the IM
while he was studying Arabic in Pune's Quran Foundation, which seemed to have
served as a favourite recruiting ground for jihadi terrorism.In this connection, reference is invited to
my note titled INDIA AS POSSIBLE WEB OF CYBER TERRORISM at
http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers29/paper2873.html

5. Pune and its Chabad Housefigured prominently inreports on the visits to India by David
Coleman Headley of the Chicago cell of the LET presentlyin jail in Chicago. Among the targets of
interest to Headley in Pune were the local Chabad House, a Jewish
cultural-cum-religious centre, which is frequented by Jewish visitors to Pune
and the local Rajneesh Ashram frequented by the Western followers of Rajneesh,
an Indian spiritual guru, who used to live in the US and was the mentor of some
sections of Western youth. Both these places reconnoitred by Headley were near
the German Bakery, but neither of them was attacked on February 13, 2010.
Instead, the German Bakery was targeted.

6. The IM was reported to have been involved in the
explosion in the German Bakery. Pune’s educational institutions attract many
foreign students from the Arab countries as well as Iran for studying computer
science and other subjects. Since there were reportedly facilities for the
study of Arabic in Pune, many Indian Muslims also go there.

7.One has the impression that the investigations
made so far by the Maharashtra Police and its Anti-Terrorism Squad as well as
by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) into the activities of
terrorism-prone elements in Pune after the arrest of some IT experts of the IM
originating from Pune in 2008 have been disjointed focussing mainly on solving
the instant cases without trying to see whether there were any linkages with
other and past cases.

8. Now that Pune figures in the terror map of
India, it is important to make a co-ordinated assessment of Pune’s
vulnerability to terrorism of various kinds, including identification of
pockets of possible Hindu extremism in the city. ( 2-8-12)